


Here's to Comedy; Here's to Me and You

by SoftRegard



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Hate Sex, Love/Hate, Lust, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 03:36:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14440605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftRegard/pseuds/SoftRegard
Summary: Angela knows about hunger, she’s been hungry all her life - but she thinks Moira may bestarving.





	Here's to Comedy; Here's to Me and You

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to experiment a little with this ship. 
> 
> note: one of moira's sprays suggests that her eyes have always been red+blue, but i've gone a different route in this. 
> 
> thanks for reading!

She’s always searched for knowledge - new ways of knowing, new ways to put that knowing into use and help those who needed helping.

Countless sleepless nights litter the path behind her, so many days without talking to another soul, lost as she was in her studies - glued to her tablet and books like a thrall. There hadn’t much time for friends, not with her pace and her ambitions. Most could not keep up, most didn’t want to try.

In Overwatch she’d finally met others like her - _truly_ like her - not just brilliant minds in science, but people who put everything into their mission: Tracer and Winston, who cared so much; the Amaris, who would put their bodies on the line even should their weapons fail; Genji, who braved the darkest places a human mind could go and came out a hopeful, peaceful soul.

Her amazement didn’t cease with the new generation - with Hana, whose young spirit could find the bright spots of joy in her bloody and ruthless work. Lucio, who worked tirelessly for the good of all even without Overwatch, and vibrant Brigitte, every bit the stalwart protector that Reinhardt was - that immeasurable, immutable element in their souls that so few others had. So many good, strong people who broke their backs to uplift the world - it had been an honour to work among them.    

She thinks of them with fondness, the kind reserved for family - even the souls that walked away.

All except for one.

*

She and Moira meet unceremoniously - introduced to each other in a lab, the way of most relationships between scientists, perfunctory and with little warmth; no notion of friendship or camaraderie, only business. She doesn’t think much of the woman at first, only noting the particulars of her appearance: tall, slender, face gaunt like a ghoul. The impersonal coldness of her eyes, faintly judging and dismissing in one swoop of her lashes. The red of her hair, the paleness of her skin - paper thin, the blue wirework of her veins visible with every movement of her neck and wrists. Not that she was looking.

Not too much, anyway.   

It was the voice that caught her at first, consonants rolling into each other like purring, spoken in dark tones that danced the fine line between condescension and pride.

“Greetings,” Moira had said - simple, professional. “I’ve heard about your work, Dr. Ziegler, I anticipate an exhilarating exchange of ideas down the line.”

The sound of it had made a shudder crawl down her back, into the dip of her spine and coming to a rest somewhere low in her belly.

“Likewise, Dr. O’Deorain,” her handshake was accepted; the other woman’s hand was cold. She’d only hoped that her own weren’t too clammy, betraying the way her thoughts betrayed _her_.

Even before everything fell apart, before Venice, Moira had been a creature cobbled together by many jarring elements: grace and gangliness, sweetness and nastiness, a brilliant mind and a failing moral compass. So like this, so like that, was she. It kept her on her toes, and interested to learn more. She’d thought, initially, that it was a quirk of character. Harmless.

The interest dissipated soon enough - upon learning what kind of a person Moira actually was: the kind they warned about in school, the ones that pushed things too far. The kind of minds that paved the way for the omnic crisis, the kind that made healthy bodies into the things that Angela could not save.

So many nights she spent, fuming and pleading with Moira to reconsider, to change her approach. Appealing to her morality, Angela would learn, did nothing but make the woman laugh - it was the only time a blush would bloom on her pale cheeks; humour, at Angela’s expense. At the expense of everyone.     

Angela never approved of Blackwatch, and Moira’s induction into their ranks was yet another justification.  

*

It starts with the eye.

Angela comes to the lab for a routine check up of some experiments, when she sees Moira hunched over the table, clutching at its edge with one white-knuckled hand as tremors crawl down her arm. The other is clasping at her own face, and even from where she stands Angela can see the nails biting harshly into the skin. Her instincts drive her forward, heels snapping on the ground as she makes her way over, already scanning that lean body for clues.

“What happened?” she takes one shaking shoulder and gently - but firmly, as is her mode - turns her around.

“Oh, just a small complication,” mutters Moira, voice light, as though she’s not entirely present. Or perhaps she just doesn’t care. Her palm covers her right eye, but Angela can see the blood pushing through the spaces of her fingers, gathering at the webbing and curling around her knuckles, as though desperate to escape.

“A small complication?!” Angela takes her by the elbow and draws her to a chair, seating her with a push on her shoulder. “Let me take a look,” she orders, firm. Moira makes no moves, only lazily gazes at her with her good eye, the blackness of her pupil blown and conquering the tranquil blue.

Impatient, Angela barks: “Dr. O’Deorain. Remove your hand at once.”

Moira blinks at her, slow, like a lizard. Or like a cat, maybe. Like something wholly unconcerned with her unreasonable human antics. So many things at once, she is. Then, before Angela can get truly testy, her hand slips off her face and lands, palm up, on her knee, fingers splayed and curled upward as if in begging. Begging with bloody hands for her understanding, or perhaps absolution. The eye is shut, and blood drools from the closed lid and through her lashes like pus.

“What happened?” asks Angela again, as she turns and fetches a cloth.

“A breakthrough, of sorts,” murmurs Moira, Dr. O’Deorain, certifiably _insane_. Who would do something like this to themselves? Only the mad, surely. “This is only a minor complication in a larger, more complete schema.”

“So this is how you skirt around ethics,” Angela grits through her teeth, wiping her down, gentle around the lid and firmer on the brow and cheek. Moira’s cheekbone is so sharp Angela feels as though her hand will slip off its slope, careening into the ether. “By using yourself as a subject - you do realize this is not much more ethically sound, do you?”

“Progress cannot be made if one is too cowardly to push ever onward,” says Moira, raising a delicate brow. Her voice is snide, impatient. “And what better subject than the one I always have on hand?”

“And what if it kills you,” snaps Angela, striding over to the sink to wet the cloth. Some of the blood has already dried and refuses to budge. “Or causes irreparable damage? How will you _advance science_ if you hurt yourself?”

“Please,” Moira waves dismissively, in a graceful arc, her hand like the talons of a sleek bird of prey. “Don’t speak to me like I’m an amateur; I’m innovative, not _stupid_. I took the necessary precautions - do not worry yourself, Doctor. Save that for the rest of Overwatch, as you always do.”

*

When it's the arm - Angela knows it's over.

She finds Moira in a state not unlike when she’d ruined her eye: trembling, sweating, gasping through pain as she gripped her purpling arm with her other hand. She’s strapped into some contraption that Angela has never seen, would not have authorized in their shared lab had she known.

Angela throws her stachel onto her desk, hard enough that it opens and her notes come tumbling out, and runs over to machine’s control panel. She’s a second away from shutting it off when Moira’s voice cuts through her focus: “ _Don’t_.”

“Are you insane?” she snaps, looking into those mismatched eyes with incredulity - there’s a small streak of blood streaming from the red one again, and the veins at her temples look ready to burst.

“Don’t you dare, _Mercy_ , or so help me -” a gasp of pain cuts her off, and she lurches against the seat with her whole body, legs spasming as she hangs onto the armrest with her good hand.

Before Angela has the chance to decide to ignore her, the machine shuts itself off with a crackle and a whirr. Moira sags like a doll, head bowed as though in prayer. Angela springs to action immediately, running over to her and pulling her head up in the palms of her hands; her eyelids are twitching, lashes fluttering and her mouth is parted around her gasps, tongue lolling behind her teeth.

“Can you hear me, doctor?” asks Angela, quietly, one hand bracing her jaw and the other seeking out her pulse - fast, but otherwise normal. “Can you see me?”

Moira murmurs something, indistinct.

Angela glances down at the woman’s right arm, at her distended veins and the purple flesh - the tendons in her hand are rolling under the skin, as though they’re trying to twitch their way out of her.

She asks again, and finally Moira regains enough of her faculties to respond, albeit weakly, “Yes - to both…”

“Are the wires safe to remove?”

She gets a nod in lieu of a verbal response, but that’s fine. She sets to work, putting the needles out of Moira’s arm, letting the tubes drop carelessly onto the floor; normally she’s respectful of another’s work, but she can’t bring herself to this time, trampling down the urge to step on them with her heel. Not that Moira seems to notice. Angela takes her by the waist and helps her over to the examination bed on Angela’s side of the lab, laying her down before running to grab a small face cloth. She gives it a quick run under the sink before jogging back and wiping the blood from Moira’s face. This is twice now, that they’ve been like this; two times too many. Would the next time have her wiping down a corpse?

There’s not much for her to do, as she doesn’t know the nature of the experient. She couldn’t even begin to assess the remains of Moira’s arm - too many disagreements, too much fatigue, too many differences between them made her stop asking after Moira’s research some time ago. She would need more time to properly observe the damage and understand the processes going into it before coming close to engineering a cure (could it be cured? What even _was_ it? Just what is Moira doing to herself?).

Angela can only get the woman a glass of water, as drugs are not an option when she doesn’t know what she’s treating. She hates feeling so helpless, hates not having the answers.

She also hates the simmering look of satisfaction on Moira’s face as she swallows it down, wiping her mouth with the back of her good hand.

“You should be more careful,” she doesn’t like the way her own hands are shaking. She’s prided herself on her steady hands, as one has to in her line of work. “You can’t _innovate_ the field if you end up dead.”

“Are you worried about me, doctor?” asks Moira, in a purr. Even with that deathly pallor and sweat-soaked hair, that bleeding eye, she looks like something out of Angela’s darkest dreams; her id, made manifest. In the form of a lean witch that speaks spells with that alluring voice of hers, that wants to bend the shape of man into unnatural abominations. Distantly, she thinks that the woman’s dishelvement skirts the line into _debauched_ , and her mind inappropriately wonders if Moira in the throes of orgasm looks like this.

Horrible. Just horrible.    

“I worry about everyone,” says Angela, breathless. Every word feels like a drop of blood in a tank of sharks, so sharp is the smile the spreads across the other woman’s face; something dangerous, something hungry.

Angela knows about hunger, she’s been hungry all her life - but she thinks Moira may be _starving_.

She stands, groin warm, ignoring the eyes on her back as she picks up her notes and shuffles them into her case. She bids Moira a goodbye, almost from the side of her mouth, head tilted slightly though she keeps her body trained toward the door. She’d rather have her at her back than give the scientist the satisfaction of seeing the fear on her face. She’s been in this business too: it’s better to let them think they’ve got you than give them any truth.

When the door hisses shut behind her, she allows herself one respite and reaches up to undo the top button of her blouse. The cool air of the base is a welcome balm on the burning of her skin.   

*

Later that night, in the quiet of her quarters, she slips a hand underneath the band of her underwear and takes herself apart, to the mantra of “Are you worried about me, doctor?” in a rumbling tone.

*

Angela has thought about how this would go, should it ever happen - that it would be tense, perhaps even violent; any sweetness would be false, dripping from Moira’s voice like bait in the maw of a flytrap, with Angela as the witless little fly. She imagined that in thinking of it - much more often than she cares to admit, but the nights are lonely on base - she’d be prepared.

She’s not prepared.

A slender finger smooths up on the underside of her thigh, and a long, manicured nail drags a line behind it - hard enough to leave a red streak, she’s sure, like garter seams. It stings, just a little bit, makes her toes curl where her leg is hitched over the other woman’s shoulder.

“You take excellent care of your skin, Angela,” Moira says with laughter in her voice. Angela couldn’t begin to guess if it’s the mocking kind, or if it’s a rare case of gentle amusement. “Where do you find the time, I wonder, in between administering cough medication and all the preaching, hm?”

“Keep that up, and I will walk out this door,” snaps Angela, hot down at her core. She’s beginning to learn that she enjoys the banter - the _insults_ , her brain corrects - and that it makes her shake. What a horrid little fetish - is this what’s become of her? Has something of Moira seeped into her, after all?

“No you won’t,” Moira says, her fingers lock around Angela’s ankle, pushing her leg back and spreading her open. She plants a kiss on sensitive skin on the underside of her knee, and it turns into a hungry little suckle as Angela twitches, cutting off her own gasp of surprise.

Moira drags her mouth down from her knee to her inner thigh, nipping with her teeth along the way and leaving a wet, cooling trail; Angela’s going to have bruises in the morning.

“You won’t walk out,” Moira continues, voice dropping in pitch, in volume, like she’s sharing a terrible little secret. “Because you’re worried for me, because you want me.”

Her left hand, the healthy one with the clipped nails, dip down between her thighs to play with her aching, wet lips - redder than her mouth, the furious blush on her face. Her touch is methodical, precise - she’s teasing out what Angela likes most, cataloguing it in that grand mind of hers, to take her apart; so unlike the few fumblings Angela had in medical school, the even fewer that came after. She’s tossing her head back onto the pillow and clamping down with her teeth on those tiny, wounded little whimpers desperate to come out.

But by the time Moira has her fingers inside her, Angela is grinding against her palm like an animal, open-mouthed and panting, clutching at the sheets with shaking hands. Distantly, past the roaring in her ears, she hears Moira’s condescending little chuckle, before a mouth seals itself over her nipple.

It doesn’t take long before she comes, pulling at the woman’s hair and shirt so tightly she has half a mind to apologize.

Coming out of her haze, Angela reaches for her, instinctual - it would be rude not to reciprocate - and already thinking of ways she could make Moira undone, how badly she wants to see it. But Moira backs off with a languid roll of her shoulders, catching Angela by the wrists and giving a small shake of her head, smirking: “Not today, I think.”

“What? Why not?” it comes out in hot tones of offence.

“Because,” says Moira, looking down her nose at her, like she’s being pathetic again. Then she leans down to breathe hotly into Angela’s ear. “You want it so very badly.”

Moira stands and, with a quick and perfunctory adjustment of her tie and shirtsleeves, turns toward the door - the long, slender line of her back swaying like a snake.

“Enjoy the rest of your evening, doctor,” she says over her shoulder, smiling. “Do think of me the next time you indulge yourself, won’t you?”

When it slides shut, Angela wrenches her pillow from under her and throws it at the door. Rage, humiliation, and desperate arousal burn a hole through her guts.

*

Soon after that is the incident in Venice, and after _that_ , a barrage of scandals and the overturning of everything they all knew. Before she knows it, Gabriel is gone, Jack is gone, Genji has left, and fewer familiar faces remain as the days pass.

Moira, too, is gone forever, disappearing into the dark underbelly of the world - free from the shackles of Overwatch’s judgement and doing God only knows what and to whom. At first, in the spaces between working and living life, Angela thinks of her near constantly: wondering where she is and what she’s doing, who she’s doing it with, which of her body parts she intends to destroy next in the name of her “science”. She refuses to think of it as pining, for they had nothing between them but ill-advised lust and professional fascination.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway.

All the way until a mission in King’s Row, when she’s separated from her team and hears footsteps behind her. She whirls around with, hands on her pistol and preparing herself to reach for her comm.

It’s a tall, leering spectre from the past - and her gun wavers in her line of sight.

The roaring in her ears drowns out the pleasant greeting, the only time Angela’s never been arrested by that sensuous voice - instead her eyes fly over those familiar, nearly unchanged features: the quirk of a sharp, red brow; the smile that always looks like a sneer; the diamond cut of her cheekbones.    

“So,” says Moira, her ageless face like a ghost. “Have you thought of me, since?”

Angela sniffs, a delicate little curl of her nose, and looks straight into those mismatched eyes, ignoring the ringing note of arousal that sings across her insides, the memories that bubble to the surface at the sound of her voice. Sounding as disaffected as she wishes she actually was, she says, “Not at all.”

Moira only chuckles, low in her throat: “You’re a poor liar, Mercy.”


End file.
